Fido the Yak

Rhythmosophy, in its phenomenological mode, presupposes no being. Saying "consciousness" is not in fact tantamount to making a naive metaphysical claim about being. On the contrary, being is a cogitatum before it is anything else. Saying "the being of consciousness" is as good as understanding consciousness through an als etwas, an "as" structure, in this case "being," which rather resembles a category. "Being" is intentional before it is anything–so far as we know apodictically. Of course one is free to speculate. (This argument by the way should be taken as a rejoinder to all ontologies, not merely those that posit sentient rocks). Rhythmosophy is a practical adventure before it is a speculative one, though its adherent so far knows very little and asks many questions. Missteps will surely be part of its developmental process. For now, for all he knows esse est percipi. Or not. Rhythmosophy makes no claims about being. (It's understanding of "existence," i.e. embodied sentient existence, could well be problematical.) Rhythmosophy begins with an intuition–I think we can call it that, though it may also be an inference one makes–that consciousness vibrates at different frequencies, or, more rudimentarily, that consciousness gives itself periodically, if not completely (different people sleep differently, it might be assumed), then to a sensible measure. Consciousness appears to have various intensities. Moreover, in daily life there is an inconstant, variable pace of consciousness, or there are various paces of the consciousness of the living subject, in Barbaras' sense of the term "living subject." The consciousness who moves, which means any consciousness that we know of, moves in rhythm. Well, I have Barbaras' Being of the Phenomenon lying around. I suppose I'll start reading that in late March. In the interim, concerning the being of the rhythmic subject, the living subject in this one sense, no initial claim, naive or otherwise, is made about its status, nature, or meaning. Obviously it's not plain stupid to talk about the existence of the living subject, or "the being of the existential subject of consciousness." It's rather a question of how one knows what one is talking about, or how one accounts for the abstractions one uses in order to intelligently talk about such things.

Labels: Barbaras, consciousness, epoché, ontology, rhythm

posted by Fido the Yak at 8:27 AM.